America has not only done nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, the hiring of them, or supporting through federal funds the huge expenses being incurred by cities and states all over the country.
You thought the tsunami damage was huge with the deaths of over 150,000 and another similar number missing -- yet, illegal immigration is flowing over the Mexican border at the rate of 1 million people per year. The Mexican government is not only not attempting to stop them, but is actively supporting them.
Wake up and smell the roses -- how can any claim to national security be made with this leaking sieve of a border? It's not just Mexicans who come across, nor even just central Americans -- it's many nationalities being ferried across.
It's true that we need genuine immigration reform, including a worker visa program, such as the Bracero program of the 60s and 70s -- but even that program will not stem the tide.
The is an INTERNATIONAL border -- it's not a state-to-state border. These people are not coming over the border illegally to play the tourist. They are being hired by American companies of all sizes that displace American workers from their jobs due to wage exploitation.
Illegal Immigration Costs Texans $4.7 Billion a Year Finds New Study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)
Tuesday April 5, 4:23 pm ET
WASHINGTON, April 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Mass illegal immigration is costing Texas more than $4.65 billion a year finds a new report released today by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Texans, examines the fiscal costs being borne by the state to provide education, health care and incarceration for an illegal alien population now estimated to exceed 1.5 million.
Continued . . . Article Published: Sunday, April 03, 2005
There's nothing cheap about immigrant laborBy Richard D. Lamm
Denver Post
It is easy to see why illegal immigrants are attractive to employers. These are generally good, hard-working people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or less), who don't generally get health or other benefits, and if they complain, they can be easily fired.
For some employers it is an abused form of labor. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.
But it is not "cheap labor." It may be cheap to those who pay the wages, but for the rest of us it is clearly subsidized labor, as we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health and other municipal costs imposed by this workforce. That has become a substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration patterns has changed.
For decades, illegal immigrants were single men who would come up from Mexico or Central America alone, pick crops or perform other low-paying physical labor and then go home. They were indeed cheap labor. But starting in the 1960s, these workers either brought their families or smuggled them into the country later. They become a permanent or semi-permanent population living in the shadows but imposing immense municipal costs.
Illegal immigration today isn't cheap labor, except to the employer. To the rest of us it is subsidized labor, where a few get the benefit and the rest of us pay. These costs ought to be obvious to all, but the myths of cheap labor and "jobs Americans won't do" persist.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~158~2792220,00.html">Continued . . .